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jbrodkin writes "One of Microsoft's hottest new profit centers is a smartphone platform you've definitely heard of: Android. Google's Linux-based mobile operating system is a favorite target for Microsoft's patent attorneys, who are suing numerous Android vendors and just today announced that another manufacturer has agreed to write checks to Microsoft every time it ships an Android device. Vendors paying off Microsoft for the right to use Android now include HTC, Velocity Micro, General Dynamics, Onkyo Corp. and Wistron. Microsoft likely makes more money from Android than its own Windows phone platform, and its latest patent agreement announced Tuesday indicates Microsoft is also going after Google's Linux-based Chromebooks."

I hear if you say Darl McBrides name 3 times in a mirror he will appear and speak to you about his litigation techniques. A few days later you'll receive a cease and desist followed by a lawsuit about trade secrets from Microsoft.

As much as the anti-MS crowd on slashdot would like this to be true, just saying this does not make it the case. Even if MS got $10 for EVERY Android device, and the 500k untils/month I found on wikipedia is close to accurate, that is 6 million units per year, or $60 million a year. And even if you say that other patent troll-esque licensing agreements multiply that by 10x again to $600 million a year

I was told this is a true story (though I probably remember some of it wrong) -

IBM's Nazgul came calling at SUN one day and demands licensing fee for several patents. After some internal reviews of the patents in question, SUN concluded that there are no merit to IBM's claims. IBM's Nazgul were completely unfazed; "Do you seriously believe that of the hundred thousands of patents in our portfolio, you are NOT in violation of ANY?" Needless to say, SUN ink the licensing agreement.

Unfortunately, it's probably apocryphal. I honestly and SERIOUSLY doubt that IBM, let alone Cravath, would be party to extortion of any kind- and the story describes that very practice in question, which is a felony in most jurisdictions for good reasons.

You can call it "leverage", but in the end, it's still just extortion.

Microsoft likely makes more money from Android than its own Windows phone platform,

This statement just cries out for at least a small amount of supporting evidence. The article doesn't appear to make this claim - so did jbrodkin simply pull this out of his nether regions, as I suspect?

Microsoft likely makes more money from Android than its own Windows phone platform,

This statement just cries out for at least a small amount of supporting evidence. The article doesn't appear to make this claim - so did jbrodkin simply pull this out of his nether regions, as I suspect?

It's been the subject of recent speculation [osnews.com] given the numbers that HTC pays them $5 for each phone and has sold 30 million sets totaling $150 million. And then compare to what WP7 makes MS:

Microsoft has admitted selling 2 million WP7 licenses, and assuming a price of $15 per license, that's $30 million in revenue.

Okay so that could be incorrect but we're just seeing more [slashdot.org] and more Android licenses [slashdot.org] resulting in payment to Microsoft. And I don't think WP7 is keeping up with that.

Is this conclusive? Not at all. The above numbers could be false. Is it probable? Well, that's for you to decide.

Except that there is no example of a free market in this story. The whole patent system (government granting exclusive rights to an idea) is yet another governmental mechanism that encourages the development of monopolies and is definitely not a free market principle. Another case where we would be better served by the government just getting out of the way. Software patents are especially ridiculous considering software is just an expression of mathematics.

The interesting thing about this is it sets a value on not using Windows. To many, many millions of people, it's worth $5 + markup to not have to use WP7. So the market has determined that WP7's value is -$5.00. I'm sure it's worth more than ten times that negative amount, but MS can't rush the shakedown too much or they'll either kill their hosts or ramp up the immune systems of their hosts (i.e., companies which aren't just parasites, because they actually produce value).

How can any company expect to profit from 'purchased patents'. I don't think it'd fly in the more civilised world. If this is the case: NO Mercy. Even if Google won with pi*10^9 dollars, what good would it really be in the end? Let the innovators and not the trolls make out technology.

Microsoft has enough money to spend on court battles that many companies would rather pay the protection money than say "f#ck you". Sad, but that's the way it is. This is why monopolies are not such a good thing.

You don't have to be a monopoly to have enough money to have a good legal team. Your statement "This is why monopolies are not such a good thing" is false. It's unrelated.

Of course if you meant to say, this is why companies who make money are not such a good thing that would be related, but I think most people would agree that companies that make money are generally a good thing.

We just need a 100% tax on LAWYERS then all the money drained into these cases will pay off the national debt... Between Apple, Gooogle, microsoft... There are $150 BILLION or so the government could use. It's not like those companies are using it in the economy...

Back when Microsoft started making waves about their patents, one of the things often shouted here on/. was "put up or shut up, tell us exactly which patents are being infringed." Nobody ever says what they are (though I think a FAT32 patent on legacy-formatted SD cards might have been mentioned).

What's funny is that the silence didn't mean Microsoft was doomed to lose. AFAIK all the settlements are under NDAs (is this incorrect?). That means that nobody can even prevent the threats by making sure they don't infringe.

I think licensing NDAs should be illegal. Not only do they passively encourage other acts of infringement, but they obscure the cost of patents that society is bearing. Of course, to patent trolls, these two reasons against license NDAs, are reasons for them...

BTW, I don't think making such NDAs illegal would be an infringement of anyone's privacy rights or overreaching government involvement. We're talking about patents, so the premise is that the government is already involved in the transaction, by means of threatening the use of force (courts) against one of the participants. If you want privacy, use a trade secret instead. (It's not that laissez faire is necessarily wrong, but under laissez faire you can't have patents anyway, so the very discussion starts with the idea that laissez faire is off the table.)

Interesting. If these companies are licensing patents, isn't it law that those be disclosed on the "credits" screen or something??? I thought if an item sold had a patent on it it legally MUST have the number on it to be valid. As these companies are essentially paying for a license, there should be a page crediting these Microsoft patents.

Interesting. If these companies are licensing patents, isn't it law that those be disclosed on the "credits" screen or something??? I thought if an item sold had a patent on it it legally MUST have the number on it to be valid. As these companies are essentially paying for a license, there should be a page crediting these Microsoft patents.

Best of my understanding: Nope. It's not like trademarks, where you have to actively defend the mark in order to retain the rights to the mark.

As the patent holder, you can let everyone in the world use your invention for free with zero acknowledgement of your genius, or you can go around demanding payment with a pinky at the corner of your mouth. Your mileage will vary based on real-world conditions and the geothermal activity of your volcano hideout.

Just the fact that they are licensing it (specifically: what patent) would be a great improvement. Other terms of the agreement are less important. Knowing those other terms would be nice too (for purposes of measuring the cost of the patent system) but even knowing that Red Hat or Novell or HTC licensed Patent X from Microsoft for use in some particular product, would help people to know that Patent X is the threat.

That would be enough for the rest of the world to come together and either fight Patent X

While I like the idea, I'm not sure how to get the implementation to work. The problem is I don't have to "license" the patent to you, I just have to wave my rights to or contractually promise not to sue you for infringing on my patent. I don't have to put you "under NDA", the contract just has to stipulate that the "license" becomes void if you reveal the contents of the contract.

Now, if we made void all contracts that contain in NDA on their contents, then I could see it working. But short of that, it

Simple solution - just make a change to how contract law works. A contract is legally binding when two parties communicate their agreement to be bound to the terms to a court, which then publishes the contract.

If you keep the terms of an agreement secret, then a court will not uphold that agreement. That means that if you secretly pay MS a lot of money not to sue you, they can sue you anyway. Hence, nobody will secretly pay a lot of money to MS not to sue them.

Microsoft sued TomTom over patents a few years back (I don't think at the time that TomTom was using Android, specifically, but they were using Linux in their devices). TomTom ended up settling with Microsoft, so I would expect that same settlement would cover any use of Android or any other flavor of Linux.

Mostly correct, not just FAT based, but it used the same technique for storing long file names in a FAT file system that Microsoft patented. If TomTom would have stuck with 8.3 filenames they would have been ok.

People also expect to be able to access command windows without interfering with the application's main window, and to be able to tab through various screens to find the information they need. Microsoft's patents enable the opening of a new, tabbed control window. (U.S. Patent No. 5,889,522)
Surfing the web quickly is a key device feature. One of the patents in this case enables devices to show the content of a page even while the

others include: 5,579,517: Common name space for long and short filenames
5,758,352: Common name space for long and short filenames
6,621,746: Monitoring entropic conditions of a flash memory device as an indicator for invoking erasure operations
6,826,762: Radio interface layer in a cell phone with a set of APIs having a hardware-independent proxy layer and a hardware- specific driver layer

Why can't we have a website dedicated to invalidating patents?
Crowdsourcing prior-art info preferably public so, as to invalidate the patent without moving domain over to a new patent.
It can't be that hard. Ofcource, if the patent is not yet granted it is easier as then you just send the info along to the examiners who in turn can force the filer to prove it isn't prior art. Once it's granted however we need a way to prove it is prior art as the onus is on us. (google the word, I hate it too...)

The cost and list of phones looks very similar to the phone sets that support Microsoft's Exchange Active Sync push technology. Is the lawsuit definitely something to do with Linux or could it just be licensing fees for synchronizing email?

You know that your legal and patent system are broken when a company is making more money from a competitor product in the making of which they had no part than from their own product. If you can't make a good product of your own, simply take some of the money your competitor makes for the profit that you're entitled to!

You know that your legal and patent system are broken when a company is making more money from a competitor product in the making of which they had no part than from their own product.

Except that no one actually knows that they are making more money that way. And no, some link where a guy basically makes up figures is not an actual reliable source of information. Secondly, their mobile division is a drop in the bucket compared to the revenues from their OS, Office suite and tools divisions.

The article does base some of its figures on hearsay, but that doesn't change the fact that the legal and patent system allow such ridiculous scenario to occur and favour it, it doesn't change the fact that Microsoft are trying hard to make it happen, and it doesn't change the fact that the figures in the conclusion are not in the least surprising to anyone here, and sound so plausible that doubts are next to non-existent.

But in the end, it doesn't matter if Microsoft are making "more" from Android or not,

MS is suing the smaller fish first to set a precedent and build some kind of case for going after the big phone makers. You notice they aren't in any crushing hurry to take on the hundreds of google or Apple lawyers.

MS is suing the smaller fish first to set a precedent and build some kind of case for going after the big phone makers

There aren't many bigger fish in the corporate waters than General Dynamics. The fifth largest defense contractor in the world. Guns, tanks and submarines. The first NSA certified smartphone. The smartphone used by Obama.

There must be some kind of case for legal harassment here. If a small company can point to a larger companies doing the same thing written down in the case against them, yet not being sued, then the plaintiff should be asked to show why they have not protected their shareholder's interests and IP -- their ostensible motivation -- by litigating the largest offenders first? Surely the plaintiff would be delighted to catch the biggest, richest fish with their ostensibly valid case? To my mind the only reason t

I'm not saying MS is right for pursuing revenue in this manner but you need to look at a couple of things. #1 Are the patents that other companies are cutting licensing checks for valid or is it just cheaper to pay the license fee then litigate? If the patents are valid and would most likely hold up in a court challenge why should MS be criticized for taking advantage of it? I see no other company or individual out there that wouldn't do the same thing. #2 Android is built on and for a Linux based platform

If the patents are valid and would most likely hold up in a court challenge why should MS be criticized for taking advantage of it?

Well, for a start, 'legal' doesn't equate to 'right' - something being legal to do doesn't render it beyond criticism.

But it's also quite widely accepted that the patent system is broken - even if you decide that software patents are in themselves permissible, the length of protection the 'inventor' gets from it compared to the pace of innovation in the industry is completely contrary to the original intent of the patent - if anything, the complaint is that this might well hold up in court more than that an

When is a company that produces ANDROID-based phones going to stand up to MS and tell them enough is enough, ANDROID is Linux-based, and Linux is not Windows.

Sadly, if your Android based device is using stuff that is covered in patents Microsoft owns... the platform is irrelevant.

The problem has nothing to do with Linux, and everything to do with how utterly broken software patents are. There's so many of them that a 'skilled practitioner' (ie pretty much any programmer) could develop as being a fairly logical application of other things. In many cases, it's stuff that those of us who took CS in school were actually taught in class, or is stuff that other people had developed years before.

Being Linux doesn't give you a free pass from the suck that is over-broad patents.

The headlines are a bit misleading. Microsoft is offering "Patent protection" (ahem..racketeering) from it's patent portfolio for a $5 fee per device sold. In short, they are not profiting from Android itself, but rather a vague threat that the folks who sell Android 'may' be violating various patents held by Microsoft. In this case, some of these companies probably feel it would cost less @$5.00 than it would to go to court and potentially come out on the losing end. I suppose it is possible that MS presen

As for TFA this is just damned smart business and if it were Apple or Google doing this the fanbois would be lining up to defend it. How much has MSFT spent on buying up patents this decade? How much have they spent on the patents they've filed? all this does is allow them to get a ROI and I would point out unlike certain OTHER companies...cough cough Apple cough...MSFT has been pretty damned good about giving RAND access to just about everything they've ever done. Don't forget that bef

>As for TFA this is just damned smart business and if it were Apple or Google doing this the fanbois would be lining up to defend it.

Yes, but there would also be loads of people claiming they're the new evil for doing it, and that they're "Worse than Microsoft ever was."

As for your whole rant about FOSS and RAND licenses, while I may not disagree that it's not Microsoft's fault these projects can't afford RAND license fees, I will say it is largely Microsoft's fault that they have to in the first place.

To what extent could some of those "aches and pains" be caused by something other than Electromagnetic Fields? E.g. talking on the phone with someone who is making you angry or stressed (e.g. afraid your boss is unhappy and you'll get fired; or your girlfriend/wife is chewing you a new one; etc)?

Stress can certainly add 'aches and pains' to people, and I would not at all be surprised if the increase in people carrying cellphones has resulted in more stress due to the increased frequency which you might enga

SCO was suing people bigger than them. That's a recipe for hard times. If you're suing a company with deeper pockets than you then you need to actually have a real case. If you're suing smaller companies you can use a lame ass case and bluff them out because they can't afford the ante. It sucks to know your opponent has a pair of 5's but you can't match the pot.

Apparently the method is to force innovation so you don't infringe, rather than merely "encourage" innovation.

Of course, the problem with many patents (as has been demonstrated by a horse beaten so badly it is now perhaps just a few molecules which once represented a horse) is that they are granted when they are so broad as to cover the desired effect rather than an implementation of the desired effect. This makes it impossible to innovate in many areas.